9/11 used as 'pretext' to attack Muslims

The September 11 attacks in the United States were used by the US government as a "pretext" to "declare open warfare on Islam and Muslims," an American activist says.

"It's totally illegal what the government is doing," said Abdul Alim Musa, the director of Masjid Al-Islam in Washington, D.C., criticizing a federal judge's dismissal of a lawsuit alleging the New York City Police Department illegally spied on Muslim Americans in New Jersey.

On Thursday, the court in Newark in the state of New Jersey ruled that the plaintiffs had failed to show that the NYPD's intelligence unit had discriminated against Muslims by spying on mosques and other locations in the state.